The petition to U.S. District Judge Michael Davis, among other things, challenges the constitutionality of the 1976 Copyright Act, the law under which the RIAA sued Jammie Thomas of Minnesota, as well as over 20,000 other defendants. The $750 to $150,000 fines the act authorizes for each download is unconstitutionally excessive and against U.S. Supreme Court precedent, wrote Brian Toder, Thomas' attorney.

Naturally, the RIAA is claiming the argument is "baseless", but if this gets set as a precedent, it won't matter if the RIAA wins the lawsuits if they're only getting a couple dollars a song. Needless to say, many people will be following this with interest.

Serhei writes: "In a recent interview with the Daily Telegraph, everyone's favorite Microsoft CEO once again used a disturbingly bad analogy (remember "squirting"?), this time to explain how Microsoft treats its core businesses. That is, he described Microsoft's core products as the "children" of him and Bill Gates and went on to describe their collaboration in the early days of Microsoft as a "husband-wife, brothers thing", causing people around the Intertubes to commence snickering. So, what do you think? Could this be the next "Developers, Developers, Developers", or will this just get slammed down as a misquote?"

Serhei writes: "It seems like the iPhone might not be released in France by this holiday season, since France requires by law that all cell phones sold there must be obtainable in an unlocked version. Apple will not be able to do so, since it has concluded a 5-year exclusivity agreement with AT&T in the US which is practically guaranteed to stipulate that an unlocked iPhone cannot be obtainable anywhere in the world, lest people flock there to buy unlocked iPhones and bring them back to the US. (In return for this agreement Apple receives a large share of AT&T's monthly revenues from iPhone subscribers.) If the iPhone falls through in France, the country can join Belgium and a potentially long list of other countries with unlocking laws, whose Apple fans will have to make do with other, less Apple-y phones.

Note that there is currently no mention of the iPhone on the Apple France page."